


looking lovely (burning bright)

by friendly_ficus



Category: Love Never Dies - Lloyd Webber
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, LND but i throw the entire show out the window, Longing, Pre-Relationship, sometimes i have taste. this is not one of those times., this was written for an audience of me and me only, too many fire metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:54:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27223834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendly_ficus/pseuds/friendly_ficus
Summary: And itisChristine Daaé, all alone and lovely after all this time, glowing in the drizzle like a candle; she is beautiful, yes. Meg knows her before a word is spoken, before she even turns her head; Meg knows the shape of her curled up in the old opera house, giggling together over some piece of gossip or another.“You’re a real peach, Jimmy,” she says, tossing the reporter a wink. “Thanks for the ride.”(By the time Fleck and the others make their grand entrance, Meg has already spirited the viscountess away.)
Relationships: Christine Daaé/Meg Giry
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	looking lovely (burning bright)

**Author's Note:**

> look, sometimes you just have to write something for your thirteen year old self. i don’t know what to say about this one. these characters are probably nigh-unrecognizable but i sure had fun writing it.

Meg has no taste for illusions, not after all these years.

_ Vaudeville trash,  _ Mother says for the dozenth time, and Meg is exhausted coming off the fourth show, wishes she were sharing a cigarette with Diedre backstage before the fifth; it’s nearly enough for her to let the smile drop and say,  _ Of course it is, we have a vaudeville act. _

No, Mother has faith in the man they have spent these past ten years propping up, Mother believes that the scaffolding they have built will somehow become a foundation, Mother wants the dreams to be reality.

_ He  _ broods and mopes and does whatever else he does behind the scenes. His songs have worsened, the shine coming off after enough time spent in concert with the rest of his schemes. 

And Meg is out before the both of them, Meg is the open hand, Meg is the cheery wink, the smile people see on posters, the person they come to watch.

_ You’re the real deal,  _ a sailor tells her after one show, to the jeers of his fellows. 

_ Sure am, sweetheart,  _ she says, and kisses his cheek. He goes red all over, trips over his own feet.

Meg has spent these past ten years learning: there are a thousand kinds of power.

She finds an early draft of the sheet music crumpled in the garbage, catches a glimpse of a portrait that’s meant to be covered, and has no taste for this particular exercise.

\---

She’s three years on the social scene, the exotic little transplant from France with her wide eyes and charming little habits, the first time she winds up in the society pages. It’s barely a blip, a reporter poking fun at a party she’d been at; she’s Meg G—, one of a dozen darlings. 

She runs her fingers over the letters so many times the newsprint bleeds onto them, smudges on her face when she’s primping in the mirror. A girl at the next party notices, laughs and pulls her into one of the mansion’s enormous bathrooms.

She sits on the table of a vanity, haloed by the lights on the mirror; draws Meg to stand between her legs and wipes at the smudges with a wet napkin. Her hand is soft on Meg’s face, her eyes are all aglow with the reflections that fill the room. Her dress is blue and her mouth is soft—Meg never gets her name.

There’s a picture of her in the society pages two months later, a smiling bride on the arm of a millionaire. Meg throws that one in the fire, watches the paper burn to ash, to nothing.

It’s no betrayal—and Meg  _ has  _ dealt with betrayal, has learned to simper and snipe with the best of them—but something in her burns along with it. Something lingers, caught alight and wanting.

She realizes later, smiling at the butcher who always sneaks an extra cut of meat in with her order, already planning what to say at a date with the local party boss, that it’s loneliness. 

\---

It’s very easy to get people to do what you want, in Meg’s experience. It doesn’t take too much more than a smile or a somber look, a strategic tear here or there; she is learning to be a mirror, and it is busy work. She mimics socialites and stage performers, changes to fit whatever scene she’s in; there’s a laugh you only laugh at parties, there are sighs you only sigh at someone who wants to hear them in bed.

Meg is becoming very, very good at it. 

“You could make a run at it,” one of the Ziegfeld Girls tells her at one party or another. Her neck is strung with pearls; they’re cool against Meg’s overwarm skin. “You’ve got that  _ air  _ about you, Meg, you could give all the rest of these starlets a real challenge.”

“Oh, I could never do what you do,” she laughs, because that’s what the other woman wants her to do. “When you get on stage, you  _ shine.” _

That night she dreams of Christine for the first time in seven years; the both of them next to each other in the ballet, strands of hair starting to come loose after a long practice. Christine is unadorned but when she turns, shooting Meg a smile before her mother can see and call her back to attention, she’s gleaming as bright as the sun.

Meg wakes with sore eyes and a headache. When she looks in the mirror all she sees is a reflection; nothing luminous in her at all.

\---

It’s nearly nothing, to get back up on stage. Nearly nothing to dance in nearly nothing, to smile her reflective smile and draw an audience in. She stops going to so many parties and starts getting mentioned in the papers a little more, on the arm of the movers and shakers of the city. There’s a picture somewhere of Meg with her head thrown back, laughing, fur stole unclasped and slipping to reveal the skin of her shoulder. She can’t remember the night at all, can’t remember the man she was with or the show they were seeing, but one of the girls in her show keeps the clipping at her dressing mirror.

She’d thought it was a catty thing, at first, until she caught the little glances sent her way. The girl, Betty, is dark-haired and wide-eyed and a little overawed at the sequins and feathers of everything around her. It’ll fade as the weeks pass, settle into a steady rhythm or curdle into resentment. And Meg... there’s a spark in Betty, but it’s the light of a flashbulb popping, and she doesn’t have the heart to put it out. There’s nothing in Meg that can serve as fuel.

She sends Alice to check on the girl when she gets a chance, drops a couple hints about having a little bit of a soft spot for their mysterious benefactor, and soon the glances stop. 

Nobody mentions Betty and Alice taking rooms at the same boardinghouse, or arriving together every day, or walking with their heads bent close together. Meg won’t hear any talk about it and nobody’s got the heart to risk her ire just to get a rise out of a couple of dancers.

Mother mentioned something once, alluded to something, and Meg had let her face go soft and wide and open, uncomprehending ingenue. It never came up again.

\---

It’s not that she really loves  _ him.  _ There’s nothing, there’s a vast nothing in him, not a scrap of fire to be found. No warmth, no light; it’s deeper than his skin, can’t be concealed by a mask. No, she doesn’t love him, but Meg can be a mirror.

He longs, she longs. He broods, she broods. He offers her a scrap, a songbird’s rejected melody, and she takes it to the stage and makes it into music. 

They are neither of them satisfied with the arrangement. She will never be Christine and he will never be Christine, and they would go in circles longing for light like hers if Meg let them. Instead, he drags them all through the dark and she reflects, she reflects, she reflects. 

Christine is in France, Christine is Madame de Chagny, Christine is a wife and a mother and a burning picture of a bride. Meg tries not to think of her often, and mostly succeeds.

At least, she succeeds until the curtain slips and she catches a glimpse of dark hair and eyes painted just a little wider than they would’ve been. Christine paled when she was afraid, her hands shook, but she narrowed her eyes.

Meg tears the curtain aside, uncaring if he catches her in the room, and drinks in the picture like she’s dying. The loneliness in her splutters, gasps, catches fire again. 

He finds her there and rages, but she can’t bear to mirror it. He shouts about love, about time, about weddings, and Meg thinks of how Christine looked in the mornings, hair a mess and eyes bright. And Meg thinks of Christine laughing with the other chorus girls, teasing and good-natured; Christine framed by the bouquets of her admirers and weaving blooms into a crown, illuminated by a dozen reflected candles. And Meg thinks that he did not ever love her, not at all, because there’s nothing in him that can.

He takes her silence as evidence that she’s been cowed, orders her not to return to this room without an invitation. She does it anyway, wrapped in the darkness he claims as his, stepping carefully through the deepest part of the night, and hears him working. Hears the first strains of a song that cannot be for anyone but Christine, not with all that agonized nothing in the notes.

She finds a crumpled draft of it and knows, and  _ knows,  _ that something is at work.

She imagines Christine, all of her light consumed by his terrible emptiness, and begins to reshape her mirror into a knife.

\---

She comes on the ship alone, her husband ill and her son away at school. Meg knows she must be terribly lonely; Christine has never been one to make friends, for all her sweetness. She is a little distant, a little remote.

And it  _ is  _ Christine Daaé at the docks, all alone and lovely after all this time, glowing in the drizzle like a candle; she is beautiful, yes. Meg knows her before a word is spoken, before she even turns her head; Meg knows the shape of her curled up in the old opera house, giggling together over some piece of gossip or another. The loneliness in her chest extinguishes all at once.

“You’re a real peach, Jimmy,” she says, tossing a reporter a wink. “Thanks for the ride.” 

And then she’s striding through the crowd bold as she pleases, a hat over her curls the only nod at anonymity. It’s lucky that everyone getting off this boat is a bigger deal than Meg Giry, who they can find five times a day down at Coney Island, who hasn’t gotten in any kind of scandal for a year, who could call up an editor with a pout in her voice and get a reporter blackballed.

“Christine!” she calls, smiling, while the flashbulbs pop at the other dignitaries. There aren’t many questions for an old opera singer when there are Rockefellers onboard.

Christine turns to look and a little bit of the lost expression on her face vanishes, subsumed under recognition and surprise and joy. The candle in her is a lantern, is a fire, is the sun; Meg will be damned if she lets it be doused.

“Sorry for the rain,” she laughs, reaching forward to take Christine’s hands. “I tried to order a sunny day, but it looks like that didn’t get through!”

“I’m so glad to see you,” Christine says, and Meg can’t mirror her, can’t even hope to, caught up in the flush of honest pleasure. 

Her hands are so warm, Meg can feel them through both sets of gloves. There’s likely some kind of plan for what happens next, but she doesn’t care at all.

“Come and see the sights with me,” she urges, turning and tucking Christine’s hand into the crook of her arm. “I’m sure there’s a party tonight, I’ll introduce you to some people. We can have some fun.”

“I really should see to my arrangements,” Christine murmurs, but Meg catches the longing in her face.

“I’ll make it happen,” she smiles, unconcerned. “Whatever you need, but we should go out; you only get the one chance to fall in love with this city.” The two of them are walking toward Jimmy’s car, arm in arm.

“Is that why you’re here? You fell in love with it?” Christine’s eyes are sparkling, some kind of weariness falling away.

“I fell in  _ something,”  _ Meg laughs. “Let's go, I’ll tell you all about it.”

**Author's Note:**

> and then they live happily ever after and nothing bad happens i guess. gustave eventually comes to live in new york and nobody is super weird about it. look, what do you want me to say here. i was just thinking about how meg deserved better and also christine did too and also? i don’t need to justify this.  
> i did not have ‘listen through LND again’ on my 2020 bingo card but here i am, doing that.


End file.
